Holy Smokes BBQ Delicatessen in Turners Falls for sale

File photo / The RepublicanThe co-owners of the Holy Smokes BBQ Delicatessen in Turners Falls seen in this 2008 photo are, from left, husband and wife Leslie J. and Lou "PapaLu" Ekus. They are shown with Leslie's son Seth N. Crawford in front of their mobile catering rig at their home in Montague.

MONTAGUE – The Holy Smokes BBQ Delicatessen, famous for dishing up slow-cooked beef short ribs so tender they fall apart at the mere touch of a fork, is for sale and will close June 16 if no buyer is found.

“We are selling the entire operation,” self-taught pit boss Lou “PapaLu” Ekus, who owns Holy Smokes with his wife Leslie J. Ekus, said. “That means all of the equipment which includes the large smoker separately mounted on a small trailer and the big trailer we built to do catering, all the deli equipment, the recipes we have developed, the rights to the Holy Smokes name, client list, Facebook fans, everything.”

That will include the recipe for those short ribs. Smoke it low and slow, Ekus said.

“It turns into a soft, sticky, moist pillow of beef candy,” he said.

Holy Smokes is currently listed for an asking price of $195,000 with Cohn & Co. Real Estate in Greenfield. That price doesn’t include its location, a former bank building at 52 Avenue A in the Turners Falls. But Ekus said the sales price does include the lease for the space.

Robert S. Cohn, owner of Cohn & Co., said the asking price was $250,000 when the business first went on the market in August. Cohn said he thought he had the place sold at one point, but the deal melted away.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity,” Cohn said Wednesday.

Ekus said even at $250,000, Holy Smokes was under priced in comparison to its earning potential.

Cohn said many chefs he talks to just aren’t interested in specializing in Southern-style barbecue the way Ekus has.

“The food business is tough,” he said. “Everybody thinks they can make a better sandwich. But when nine out of 10 of these places go out of business within two years, you need to realize that there is more to it.”

Ann L. Hamilton, executive director of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, said it can be tough to sell a restaurant where the owner’s personalities are so much a part of the eating experience.

“That’s the case with them, Both Lou and Leslie have worked so hard,” she said.

But Holy Smokes has a strong enough following that it will be successful, Hamilton said.

Lou and Leslie Ekus first opened Holy Smokes in 2003 as a restaurant in a former church in Hatfield. That church burned down in 2007. After settling with the insurance companies, they decided to have their large kitchen trailer built so they could bring catering to their customers. They opened the deli in 2010, but Ekus said the real money is found in the catering business and ideally the deli functions as much as a showroom and sales tool for catering jobs as anything else.

Ekus counts Holy Smokes as part of Turners Falls’ transformation into a funky downtown of unique restaurants, bars and shops.

“Its a different town than it was even two or three years ago,” he said. “It’s having its own little renaissance from being this tiny little depressed mill town.”

Some potential customers are having trouble detouring around a years-long bridge reconstruction project, though.

“We are seeing it affect the traffic in town, there is no doubt about it,” he said.

Lou Ekus, 56, said he and his wife are getting to ages where they don’t want to put the time into Holy Smokes. They have two other businesses: Airtime Corp., which does media training for chefs looking to go into television and online video, and Tropic Marin USA Inc., which imports saltwater aquarium equipment.